Paley Center Launches New Quarterly Event

NEW YORK: The Paley Center for Media has partnered with Mediabrand’s Velociter to launch The Next Big Thing, a series of quarterly gatherings that will bring together new entrepreneurs with established leaders and investors in the media, entertainment and technology spaces.

The Next Big Thing will feature short presentations from new entrants in these industries as they outline their businesses and strategies. This will be followed by intimate discussions with a select audience, drawn from the Paley Center’s Media Council, and other leaders and innovators in the new media, technology and venture capitalist communities. The inaugural event is set for January 2011.

A Next Big Thing advisory board will work to identify startups and curate the sessions. The advisory board will be chaired by Scott Kurnit, founder of About.com and Paley Center trustee, and include, among others, Tim Hanlon, the CEO and managing director of Velociter; Wendy Clark, the senior VP of integrated marketing and communications capabilities at Coca-Cola; Kay Koplovitz, Paley Center board member and founder and CEO of Koplovitz & Co.; Clay Shirky, author and associate professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program; angel investor Yossi Vardi; and Fred Wilson, managing partner of Flatiron Partners and Union Square Ventures.

“As The Paley Center for Media has long provided a forum for industry leaders from around the world to gather and chart the future of media, there is no better place for rising innovators and entrepreneurs to meet the pillars and pioneers of our industry,” said Pat Mitchell, the president and CEO of the Paley Center. “The Next Big Thing series puts the Paley Center at the forefront of change in the media business.”

“By enabling this kind of exchange of ideas and experience between the new and the established, the Next Big Thing series could have a direct impact on innovation and growth across the media industry,” added Kurnit, the CEO of AdKeeper. “Startups get access to high-level executives and the wisdom of their collective experience while media executives and investors get a closed-door look at new ideas and new talent from the digital world.”

“The Next Big Thing program at the Paley Center for Media is an important forum that is uniquely positioned to connect the leaders of today’s most successful media companies with cutting-edge innovation from the country’s most compelling technology startups and entrepreneurs,” commented Hanlon. “It is the ideal environment to foster dialogue, debate, and mutual benefit among the key architects of the future of media and communications.”